Science or nonsense? It’s often hard to tell. ESPforMe offers a “brain computer interface for iPhone”, which uses a special headset to pick up your brainwaves and uses them to perform Web searches. You even collaborate with others. It’s on the Apple App Store so it must be legitimate.
Private equity investors continue to replace public markets as the main buyers of marketing and advertising tech companies. Latest transaction is DoubleVerify, which battles online ad fraud by authenticating that impressions are viewed and the viewers are human. Buyer was Providence Equity Partners. They didn’t announce a price but the Wall Street Journey says they paid around $200 million for a majority stake.
Seven new sponsors have joined the Customer Data Platform Institute and individual membership has quadrupled since January, the Institute announced today. The growth reflects rising interest in CDPs as marketers and analysts recognize these systems can solve the challenge of providing unified customer data needed to deliver personalized customer experiences.
Disney has agreed to license more than 200 characters, costumes, and environments (but not voices or talent likenesses) to OpenAI for Sora, its gen AI video platform. This is highly unusual for Disney, which generally sues AI models for copyright infringement; in fact, it sued Google for that a day before announcing the OpenAI deal. Disney will also invest $1 billion in OpenAI, nicely illustrating how very eager they are to join the AI party.